‘Round and ‘Round

Communication keeps the wheel of sales turning 

By Andrea Hill

It’s rather uncommon to see very large families today, but when I was growing up it was not unusual to know families with 12 or 13 children. I grew up with the children of two of these families, and I was always fascinated by their orderly homes. Whereas my relatively small family of six always seemed to be on the verge of chaos, the Webers and the Tarboxes were a miracle of order. Everyone knew what to do, when, and with whom.

Later in life as I made my way up the corporate ladder in companies that served small businesses, this paradox came back to me. I was fascinated to observe that companies with 500 or 1,000 employees seemed to communicate better with one another than very small businesses with only 10 or 20 employees. In a large company, I generally expected a person in the marketing department to be aware of the needs of salespeople 2,000 miles away, whereas in a small company the marketing coordinator often didn’t know what the salesperson across the hall was up to. Just like the mega families I grew up admiring, large companies have developed an understanding of who needs to do what, when, and with whom. This type of communication and collaboration is the key to successful marketing strategies.

Whether your marketing department has dedicated employees or is simply one of the roles you take on, learn to view your marketing effort as a hub in the middle of many spokes. The outer wheel is sales and the spokes connecting it to the hub are merchandising, inventory control, product development, and accounting. The wheel can’t turn without the hub, and the hub goes nowhere without the wheel.

How the hub and wheel work together through the spokes will determine how balanced and smooth the ride is. Let’s review a couple of bumpy rides to see how this works—or doesn’t.

Design Wisely

At ABC Design Co., the head designer is also the owner. She is an excellent jeweler, and her retailers love her work. After some contemplation she decides to create a 22k gold line, which is a change from her usual product mix of 30 percent silver, 70 percent 14k. Because she is protective of her new idea and wants it to be more well-rounded before she presents it to anyone, she keeps it a secret. In the meantime, her marketing coordinator is busy booking the next six months of store events and trunk shows, heavily promoting the silver line as a way to help retailers cope with price pressures.

The Problem: Six weeks later the designer is ready to launch, and a host of problems become evident: The current advertising campaign has not cultivated any customers interested in a 22k line, retailers are expecting—and have been promoting—trunk shows based around more silver product, and the accounting department is unprepared for the cash demands of creating this higher cost line with current cash flow and cash reserves.

The Fix: The solution would have been to initially communicate with the marketing coordinator. The person in that role should be able to offer meaningful insight from the consumer perspective, conduct or outsource research to ensure that the customer for this higher end product can be developed, and tilt the marketing messages to start preparing for the new product and its desirable new consumers. He or she can also communicate with sales management to ensure sales training on the new products will take place before the launch. You just don’t have that many employees, you say? You might be surprised to learn how often a company of three or four people suffers from an identical failure of communication.

Plan Accordingly

Studio Designer Store is both blessed and cursed with a highly involved owner. He is a hard worker and a little bit hyper, so it pains him to see anyone looking only half busy. He pops his head into each of the work areas throughout the day to ask what’s going on and makes suggestions about work that could be done. His employees love him like they love a pesky uncle. One day when his studio retail salesperson is looking like she wished a customer would walk in, he tells her to plan a party for next month. “Arrange for some food and wine, get on the phone, and start calling your best customers to come by for a mixer,” he says. The saleswoman likes the idea and digs right in.

The next day the owner tells his daughter—the person responsible for inventory—to plan some sale items for the mixer that he can really mark down and blow out.

The Problem: The day of the event three things come to light: Nobody ever sent out any support marketing materials, so the only promotion that took place was the phone work, which died down after the second day of calling. The retail staffer who organized the party planned it in conjunction with a winter art series in the business district, which is known for high-style patrons, but the inventory manager identified many old and outdated items for sale—items that would not be appealing to the expected high-value attendees.

The Fix: If marketing had been involved, these pitfalls could have been avoided.  A solid marketing planner would have pulled the studio store manager, inventory manager, and their beloved pesky uncle together to discuss the goals and objectives of the desired event. He or she would have ensured that all elements were coordinated and served to reinforce one another.

No matter how big your business, the marketing function must sit firmly in the center of communications, gathering information from all departments and disseminating it back. It’s hard to slow down and ensure this type of communication happens, but when it does, the wheel of sales turns better than ever before.